Waited not
in gloom and tears but as normal healthy youth awaits any
adversity not definitely scheduled for an hour close at hand. It
would be far indeed from the truth to picture Susan as ever for
long a melancholy figure to the eye or even wholly melancholy
within. Her intelligence and her too sympathetic heart were
together a strong force for sadness in her life, as they cannot
but be in any life. In this world, to understand and to
sympathize is to be saddened. But there was in her a force
stronger than either or both. She had superb health. It made her
beautiful, strong body happy; and that physical happiness
brought her up quickly out of any depths--made her gay in spite
of herself, caused her to enjoy even when she felt that it was
"almost like hard-heartedness to be happy." She loved the sun
and in this city where the sun shone almost all the days,
sparkling gloriously upon the tiny salt particles filling the
air and making it delicious to breathe and upon the skin--in
this City of the Sun as she called it, she was gay even when she
was heavy-hearted.
Thus, she was no repellent, aggravating companion to Rod as she
awaited the cataclysm.
It came in the third week. He spent the entire day away from her,
toward midnight he returned, flushed with liquor. She had
gone to bed. "Get up and dress," said he with an irritability
toward her which she had no difficulty in seeing was really
directed at himself.
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